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The Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday approved changes to the state's Open Meetings Act, aimed at addressing recent Alabama Supreme Court rulings that the bill's sponsor said "gutted" the law.

"There's a lot of uncertainty as to who that act applies to," said Sen. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster, who also chairs the committee.

The legislation was introduced last year and passed the Senate, but died on the last day of the 2014 Regular Session amid a fight between Gov. Robert Bentley and legislative leaders over the state's budgets. The legislation is effectively the same as last year's bill.

The three Supreme Court decisions were handed down in 2012 and 2013. In 2012, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that the Montgomery County Board of Education did not violate the Open Meetings Act when it had two or three board members at a time meet with then-Superintendent Barbara Thompson to hear her plans and goals without being in a public meeting.

The high court ruled that "meeting" only referred to gatherings where a majority of board members were present. The court also ruled that back-to-back serial meetings that were not public and ultimately involved a majority of the board members — but no more than three at a time — did not violate the act, due to the lack of language on that front.

In 2013, two former Alabama Public Television executives claimed APT's governing commission purposefully met in secret to fire them. The state's high court ruled that the executives did not have standing to bring the lawsuit, even if they could prove their claims, because fines assessed for violations would be paid to the state, not the plaintiffs.

That same year, dealing with ongoing fights over the Alabama Accountability Act, the Supreme Court ruled 8 to 0 that the "Alabama Constitution does not require the Legislature to conduct its meetings in public," despite Section 57 of the Constitution which requires the doors of both chambers to be kept open.

Ward's bill would prohibit serial meetings; clarify the definition of meeting; specifically apply Section 57 of the Constitution to the Legislature and give citizens standing to apply and set a minimum penalty of $1 for violations of the act.